New Toronto Japanese restaurant only serves a custom-bred $100 chicken
A just-opened Toronto restaurant is taking the concept of "intentional ingredients" to a whole new level, centring its menu around a $100 chicken that was custom-bred just to land on the menu.
The restaurant's location at 156 Cumberland St. is already a well-known address in Toronto. The former home of Michelin-recommended 156 (before it relocated, keeping the name that originally referred to its address), and situated in the heart of the city's upscale Yorkville neighbourhood, virtually anything that moved in next would hit the ground running.
But Chef Masaki Saito, the Michelin-starred chef behind Sushi Masaki Saito, MSSM and Ramen Tabetai, isn't the sort to phone it in, ever. You don't earn a stint as one of Canada's sole Two-starred chefs that way.
That's why he, with partner and Head Chef Takuma Mukouzaka, has gone above and beyond virtually anything we've seen in Toronto to date with their new concept, Yakitori Momiji, which soft-opened at 156 Cumberland St. in early September 2026.
Centred around Japanese charcoal barbecue, or yakitori, Chef Mukouzaka brings five years of experience perfecting the craft at a Michelin-starred Osaka yakitori restaurant, which came after a stint at Michelin-starred French restaurant Cosimo Plus.
Now, joining forces with the larger-than-life Chef Saito, he's prepared to show Toronto the full extent of what yakitori can be. And it all starts with one very special chicken.
"Chicken is the most common ingredient in the world, and perhaps the most overlooked," a statement on the restaurant's website reads. In yakitori, it goes on to explain, the chef works meticulously to prepare and serve every part of the bird, including cuts that are often discarded in North American kitchens.
Yakitori Momiji brings that practice to Toronto. The restaurant serves a 15-course, $248 omakase menu where each course is centred around a different cut of chicken, cooked on skewers over the binchotan charcoal grill.
This isn't just any old bird you'll find used for your Costco rotisserie chickens, though. The chickens used at Yakitori Momiji have been custom-bred over two years at a local Ontario farm just over an hour outside the city to ensure the best possible flavour.
"Working closely with the farm, Takuma and Chef Saito incorporated Japanese poultry raising techniques into the process. This included giving the birds more time and space to develop, as well as creating a special diet designed specifically for yakitori," the restaurant's website reads.
"Raising chickens this way for a single yakitori counter does not make conventional economic sense. But Takuma and Chef Saito's commitment inspired our farm partner to take on the challenge with the same passion. Together, we developed an exclusive heritage breed found nowhere else, raised in Ontario for yakitori and yakitori only."
They also happen to run around $100 a pop, which makes the meal's nearly $250 price tag feel a little bit more palatable.
And though, for the tender-hearted among us, the restaurant's promise that the birds were "bred for one purpose" may strike as cruel, the reality is that most of the world's chickens are bred for that same purpose. The difference is that other chickens aren't typically afforded the same quality of life, space to roam and diet that's required to meet Yakitori Momiji's rigorous standard of quality.
There's also a mercy in knowing that every last piece of the chicken was used to productive — and delicious — ends.
Reservations for Yakitori Momiji open online.
